Foodiots waiting with baited breath to hear yet another forecast of 2015's top food trends (remember, kale toast is so out), rejoice: the NRA—National Restaurant Association, to be clear—has released their ten predictions for the year. Embrace the year of local sourcing, with locally-sourced meats and seafood, produce grown close to home, and hyper-local purveyors topping the list. It's a trend that may seem familiar to New Yorkers, who've grown accustomed to seeing the "local" declaration on new restaurant menus of the past decade; now, the movement is gaining nationwide prominence.
Chef Marc Murphy over at Kingside in Midtown—the same guy behind Landmarc in Tribeca and the Upper West Side—is one of the driving forces behind this local push in New York City restaurants. Murphy selects new purveyors each month to highlight in a week of specials, and says it's vital NYC businesses and customers support local vendors, too.
"It's important, because we're supporting our fellow New Yorkers, to start with. Jobs upstate, there were some great factories up there a long time ago, Kodak, and all that, they're all gone. They're not there anymore. They need jobs up there... Unless you support them, they're not going to be able to help themselves," Murphy explains.
"I'm getting all my cheeses at Landmarc now from upstate New York. Before, I was getting some from France, some from Holland, and it's like, 'Why the hell am I flying this shit all the way over here?'" he says. "I think that if you started concentrating on eating more locally, you're going to start eating more healthy. You're going to start getting fresher product, you're getting poultry and all these other things, and I think that's something we as a country need to start doing a lot more of."
Murphy's insistence on using local produce when available reflects not only what those in the industry are leaning towards, but also the changing tastes of their customers, according to the NRA's Director of Research Communications.
"When it comes to food choices, consumers are showing increased interest in local sourcing and sustainability overall, reflecting their personal philosophies as they have in other lifestyle choices," said Annika Stensson.
Part of the local sourcing deal is not being able to rely on certain items all the time, and Murphy said he's adjusted his menus to reflect that. The descriptions on his menus are less specific, lending themselves to last-minute alterations depending on the season.
"If we do a scallop dish with beans, for example, we're not going to specifically say the bean. We're going to try and get the local, the freshest, whatever's in season. Throughout the six months of the menu, that bean will change. Or like, squash, it's a general enough term. It's a little more vague but it allows us to be more naturally local," says Murphy.
But it's not just local produce and local meat restaurants can get behind. Murphy said when he realized how much local booze New York State was producing, he was eager to back it.
"New York State was the largest producer of hops before prohibition, there are distilleries that are popping up like crazy in upstate New York. There's hops everywhere! So I put it to my beverage director, and all my people in the restaurants, and said 'Alright guys, we've gotta start finding local booze.' And we really reached out, I think we have gin from Brooklyn now, and we have obviously bourbons from upstate."
One of Murphy's favorite hyper-local purveyors is the cured meats deli Salumeria Biellese on 8th Avenue—"They do all their own curing, all their own grinding"—and he said part of his enjoyment of helping local purveyors comes from watching their growth and the unique tales behind them.
"The other day I heard from a supplier, and she's like 'Mussels are out, mussels are having a hard time, they're not going out and farming the mussels right now, it's too damn cold up there'," Marc recalls. "So that's great. We'll stop mussels, we'll stop selling them. When the guests come in and order mussels, we have a great story. 'You know what, we're not farming them right now. It's too cold there!'"
As for other food trends beyond local produce? The NRA surveyed close to 1,300 chefs for its culinary forecast, and the year's other hot picks to look out for include: a closer focus on sustainability, healthy kids meals, minimally processed food, new cuts of meat, waste reduction and farm-branded items.
